It's a Small Universe After All
by the dread pirate buttercup
Summary: Even a posting halfway across the known universe is not enough to get away from unsavory relatives, as Officer Bennet knows only too well. Space has never felt smaller.


Grunting and heaving, Mary shoved the thick steel door inch by inch into its closed position. She could hear the smattering of flaming meteors pelting closer and closer towards her; massive, flaming lumps of rock whose regular appearance in the atmosphere prevented anything much from growing on the arid surface. To be caught out in the storm without the protection of even a reinforced hazmat suit spelt an agonising death of your skin slowly disintegrating before your very eyes. Luckily, you were blinded after a few minutes because your eyeballs start to boil, so you didn't have to watch the strips of muscle fall away and your organs spill out of you. The pain (according to theoretical models coming out of the sci-lab) was not that bad though, because most of the time you don't live long enough to recover from the numbing shock, and half the time the impact of a nearby boulder smashing into the earth shatters all the bones in your body, and your spinal cord.

This, thought Mary, wryly, was all assuming you were not flattened outright by an incredibly heavy rock ploughing into you from on high. The thought flickered out of her mind again, as she felt the tremors beneath her feet increase, and with another shove, the door clicked into place and started clunking and hissing as it sealed itself shut so tightly that not even a small attack unit from the United Empire could fire enough ammo knock it through.

The bunker was identical to every other bunker Mary had ever seen. Sparse decoration, hard edges, emergency lighting, and a pervasive greyness that seeped from the walls into everything within it, from the people to the food.

Mary popped off her helmet and took a deep breath of recycled air, leaning heavily against the doorframe. Much as she hated this planet and everyone on it, she secretly relished the rush of adrenaline one experienced daily when running for one's life was part and parcel of the mundane routine.

The small, involuntary smile that had briefly graced Mary's lips was completely wiped off as she clunked through the connecting doors into the atrium. Site protocol demanded all trips out should be logged and debriefed by a specially trained officer upon return. These usually consisted of a short conversation while the hazmat data was uploaded onto the system. Hector, the debriefing officer for the west entrance, was a soulless woman who had less personality than Mary's pet goldfish, but was at least preferable to the officer usually on the east entrance.

"What are you doing here?" asked Mary abruptly.

Wickham looked up from his glossy and bestowed Mary a beauteous smile. "Mary, you know as well as anyone that all expeditions beyond the walls of the bunker must be logged and catalogued by a trained officer." His head cocked slightly to the left, making Mary twitch. How she wanted to slap him. "After all, you wrote most of the rule book."

Mary clenched her jaw shut. Being head safety officer was no joke, despite her daredevil streak. She knew the risks involved, and it irked her when people disregarded her work as just ways to spoil the party. But then, Wickham knew this.

"How's Lydia?" She asked tightly as she plugged the data cable into her hip herself. Wickham wasn't going to touch her if she anything to say about it, protective suit or not.

Wickham shrugged. "She's gone off somewhere for a few days. Training with her team unit."

"So what have you done with Olive?" asked Mary, referring to their baby daughter.

Wickham shrugged again. It was an elegant movement, designed to firmly shunt any responsibility that might have found its way onto his shoulders. "Lydia said she'd taken care of it. With Peg probably. Or Harriet."

Despite Mary's relief that Wickham had not been given charge of her niece, she felt that a withering look was still deserved, and dispensed one accordingly as she unplugged the data cable. Seeing that she was about to leave, Wickham quickly came round to the topic that had presumably caused him to swap shifts with Hector.

"And what about the rest of our family? Have you heard from any of our esteemed relations recently?" The tone was still nonchalant, but there was a tinge of desperation in his voice he couldn't quite hide.

Mary gave him a long hard look.

"Mrs Bingley is pregnant. Due next summer. I'll be sure to pass on your congratulations."

And with that she strode away out of the room, careful not to look like she was running away.


End file.
